STATE’S DAILY RATE OF POSITIVE VIRUS TESTS AT 10-WEEK HIGH
Illinois’ coronavirus testing positivity rate inched up again Tuesday with the latest 1,740 cases confirmed statewide.
Those new cases were diagnosed among 34,175 tests, or about 5.1% of them — the highest positivity rate for a single day in Illinois in more than 10 weeks.
The state hadn’t cracked 5% since June 5, when 6.1% of COVID-19 tests results came back positive.
That raises Illinois’ seven-day testing positivity rate over the last week to 4.3%, a number that has crawled up from 2.5% on July 7.
Health officials say that rate indicates how rapidly the virus is spreading. Near the height of the pandemic in mid-May, it soared close to 17% across Illinois.
Chicago has remained level at 5% as testing has remained “consistently high,” with the city averaging about 7,500 daily tests, Chicago Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said.
“We would like that below 5% ideally, but we’ve not seen it spike up like we’ve seen in other parts of the state and some other parts of the country,” Arwady said.
Chicago has recorded roughly 300 new cases each day in the last few weeks, down from a peak of roughly 1,000 daily cases in early May.
The state on Tuesday announced 27 more deaths attributed to the virus, raising Illinois’ death toll to 7,782 since March.
Chicago officials also updated the city’s travel quarantine list to remove Wisconsin and Nebraska.